


The Haunting of Oikawa Tooru

by Esselle



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Feels, Fluff and Humor, Ghosts, KageHina are ghosts, M/M, oikawa is a single dad just trying to do right by his ghost kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 01:26:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14683551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esselle/pseuds/Esselle
Summary: This is not how Tooru wanted to spend his day. It's not his fault he's so in tune with the spirits. He didn't ask to have his house haunted—he’s not even getting paid for this.But unfortunately, they won't go away until he figures out how to help them be at peace."Okay," Tooru says, "so Chibi-chan, you foolishly summoned Tobio-chan's restless spirit, and he's still too clueless to figure out how to move on, hmm?"--Tooru prefers not meddling in the affairs of the dead. Sometimes, however, their spirits don't give him that option.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kkumri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkumri/gifts), [Allykat23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allykat23/gifts).



> The improbable [Ouija board AU](https://twitter.com/Esselle_hq/status/948119392876761089), which I wrote for lovely [Ally's](http://kkumri.tumblr.com/) birthday awhile back <333 
> 
> **DISCLAIMERS:** This fic is split between humor and feels, but KageHina are both ghosts, so definitely take that with a grain of salt if you’re averse to character death (which I am, so this is very soft to compensate).
> 
> Secondly, I thought about substituting the _Kokkuri-san_ game in place of Ouija, but I felt like it might be harder to convey the story for people who aren’t as familiar with the concept, plus that game only pertains to one spirit. So please feel free to imagine ghost!Kageyama painstakingly spelling out basic English phrases.  

To the best of Tooru's knowledge, it all seems to have started off as a joke.

That's how it always happens, he thinks in a long suffering inner voice; that's why so many horror movies are kicked off by dumb kids with their dumb bets and their dumb bravado. And he is without a doubt dealing with two of the dumbest, currently.

Well—maybe former dumbest. Is he still allowed to call someone dumb when they've passed on? Whatever, he's the one being haunted, so he'll say whatever he wants. He lays his cheek on the table in annoyance and pushes some of his tarot cards around on his elaborately laid oracle's table with its turquoise crushed velvet covering, it's volleyball-sized crystal ball with the vines carved ornately around the base. He sighs.

"Okay," he says. "Tell me, again— _without_ arguing over each other, this time—what happened."

To reconfirm: it started with a joke.

"Well," says a warbly, wispy little voice, and the mist in Tooru's crystal ball swirls and turns an intense, warm orange. "It was more of a dare, really."

*

It was a dare, and not a bet, because Tsukishima was too smart to pay Hinata when he knew Hinata would do anything for free if he was challenged to it, and Hinata was dumb enough to fall for it every time.

This was how Hinata, Tsukishima, Yamaguchi, and Yachi ended up huddled around a Ouijia board late one Saturday night, candles lit around them. Yachi, hidden almost entirely under a blanket until only her eyes and nose were visible, the entire blanket shivering, said,

"Messing around with ghosts and stuff is serious! I don't think we should do this!"

Yamaguchi looked as though he wanted to agree, but Tsukishima said, _"We_ aren't doing anything." He smiled serenely at Hinata. "Hinata wanted to try this all by himself, because he's so brave."

Hinata was not brave. Hinata wanted to yank the blankets off Yachi and cower under them himself. But instead, he said, "Yeah! Those ghosts better come at me!"

 _Please, god, oh please,_ he thought, _do not let any ghosts come at me._

Using a Ouija board, in and of itself, was not very exciting. It was just a wooden board with letters all over it, and a small wooden planchette with a little hole in it that slid across the board, to indicate the selected letters. Supposedly, once a spirit was summoned, it would use the board to communicate with them by moving the planchette. Hinata would be the one acting as a medium, letting the spirit guide him and show him where to move it.

"What if… Hinata gets possessed?" Yamaguchi asked nervously. Yachi made a pitiful grunting noise and burrowed further into the blanket.

"He won't," Tsukishima said. "Even if he does, the ghost will probably get so depressed to be in his body that it'll leave."

"Mean!" Hinata said, sticking his tongue out at Tsukishima, and then, "Are you sure it'll leave?"

"Are you scared?" Tsukishima shot back.

"No!" Hinata yelped. He took a deep breath and put his hand on the planchette. "Okay, ghosts! Announce your presence!"

Nothing happened. Tsukishima snorted. "None of them want to talk to you."

"Maybe they're scared of me!" Hinata said.

Seconds later, he screamed. Yachi screamed. Yamaguchi screamed. Tsukishima looked annoyed.

"What?" he asked.

"It's moving!" Hinata whisper-shrieked. On the board, the planchette had shifted, with Hinata's finger still pressed on top of it.

"What's it saying?!" Yamaguchi asked, trying to hide behind Yachi.

"Wh… Who…" Hinata read, as the words formed slowly, "are… you. _‘Who are you'!_ It wants to know who I am!"

"Oh, come on," Tsukishima said, "you're moving it yourself, it's so obvious."

"I'm not!" Hinata said indignantly.

"Don't tell it your name," Yamaguchi hissed.

"Right," Hinata agreed. "Who am I? Who are _you?"_

They all stared at the board as someone—or some _thing_ —formed the next answer.

 _I… asked… first…_ it spelled out, and then: _Dumbass._

Hinata gasped in outrage as Tsukishima clutched his stomach in a fit of laughter.

"Holy shit," he said, "you actually managed to summon a ghost… and it hates you."

*

This is not how Tooru wanted to spend his day. It's not his fault he's so in tune with the spirits. He didn't ask to have his house haunted—he's not even getting paid for this.

But unfortunately, they won't go away until he figures out how to help them be at peace.

"Okay," Tooru says, "so Chibi-chan, you foolishly summoned Tobio-chan's restless spirit, and he's still too clueless to figure out how to move on, hmm?"

Hinata, who mainly shows up in Tooru's crystal ball as tangerine-colored smoke, but sometimes gives Tooru the vague impression of a small, excitable bird, yelps his agreement. But then the smoke in the crystal swirls blue-black, and a harsh voice barks out,

"I was fine until he summoned me!"

Kageyama, mostly, gives Tooru the impression of a large pair of angry eyebrows, which is fitting, because he is grumpy most of the time. Still, while his ire is usually directed at Hinata, there seems to be something more going on there. After all, Kageyama was the ghost that responded to Hinata's presence the fastest. And then, there are the circumstances surrounding Hinata's new state of being.

Because obviously, while Hinata had been alive the first time they'd encountered each other, this was no longer the case.

"Wait a moment," Tooru says, realizing they've skipped over a crucial detail. "Exactly what happened to Hinata-kun, then?" An explosion of arguing follows his words, and he holds up his hand. "Tobio-chan, explain."

*

Being a ghost wasn't bad, but it wasn't exactly good, either. Kageyama couldn't remember when or how he had become a ghost anymore, but he did know that the first time he could remember the boringness of it being shaken was when a voice had just called out to him, from nowhere.

The voice had demanded some ghosts pay attention to it, except really, it had seemed to be yelling right at Kageyama, and so Kageyama had come to see who it was, a bit like someone had started banging too loudly and insistently on his front door.

Except when he'd opened the door, he'd been met by an idiot who wouldn't even tell Kageyama who he was when asked.

It had been very hard to communicate through the contraption Hinata had chosen to argue with Kageyama through, but argue they had, late into the night, long after Hinata's friends had gone to sleep. Hinata whispered, but his voice was loud to Kageyama; it was the only thing Kageyama had been able to hear clearly in a very long time. And so Kageyama slowly spelled out his words:

_You play sports? You're so small._

"So what if I'm small! I'm going to be the ace one day."

_What's an ace?_

"The best player on the team, obviously. Did you die before sports were invented?"

_I just died before they let people who suck onto the team, I guess. Do other people play with you?_

"Yes! Well, kind of. Almost. They say I should keep practicing, and maybe I can play more then…"

_I'd play with you._

"R-r-r-really?!"

_Yeah. So you can see how much better I am._

"Bastard."

Kageyama found that being disturbed, shaken out of the boringness a little bit, wasn't so bad. It was almost fun.

They spent a lot more time talking. Kageyama wondered if Hinata thought it strange—to spend so much of his time talking to a ghost, lying under his blankets with his cell phone used as a flashlight so he could see the Ouija board properly.

Kageyama wondered if Hinata could feel him there, too, lying beside him. Sometimes Hinata would shiver a little bit, when Kageyama's transparent arm brushed through his. Kageyama tried not to let it happen, but he liked lying as close to Hinata as possible. It made it easier to talk, to say what he was thinking. Even if half of it was insults.

The thing was that ghosts had a special relationship with those they were close to, and with that force which was always close to them: death.

Everyday, Hinata left for school, and every day Kageyama, tied to the Ouija board, waited for him to come home, and every night, they would talk until very late.

One day, Hinata got ready for school. And Kageyama watched him, feeling that something was different today. Something had changed. He tried to rattle the board, but Hinata just patted it absently; he'd overslept and he was late. He left, and Kageyama waited. And in the evening, Hinata came home. It was dark, as usual, when Hinata called out to him.

But nothing else was the same.

"Kageyama?"

Kageyama turned and saw him. Hinata stood in the middle of his room, only standing wasn't quite the right word. His little feet in his little sneakers passed straight through the floor on every step, like he was trying to walk normally and hadn't realized the ways the world worked for the living no longer applied to him. He glowed around the edges, a soft gold-orange, and Kageyama thought he looked more beautiful than ever.

Then he realized this must mean he'd been thinking of Hinata as beautiful for a long time.

More startling than anything else, he was looking right at Kageyama. Hinata had only ever looked _through_ him before.  

"You… dumbass!" Kageyama shouted, and Hinata flinched at the sound of his voice, because he could hear it now. "What did you do?!"

"I… it rained…" Hinata said. "And I was biking next to the river and I think I fell in…"

Kageyama swore. "Did it hurt?!"

Hinata shook his head. "No. The last thing I remember thinking before I fell was…"

"What?" Kageyama asked, incensed. Was it food, or manga, or sports? What stupid thing could have caused Hinata to lose focus like that?

"I was really excited to come home and talk to you," Hinata said.  

If Kageyama had still needed to breathe, he would have stopped. As it was, he could only stare. "Oh."

"Hey, Kageyama…" Hinata said softly, "you really look just like I imagined you would."

For the first time since they met, when Kageyama touched Hinata, Hinata didn't shiver, and Kageyama didn't pass through him. He hugged him tight and Hinata clung to him, and they stayed like that for a long time.

"I tried to warn you," Kageyama told him. "Stupid, you never listen to me."

"That's because you say dumb things," Hinata said. His arms squeezed tighter around Kageyama's middle and he rubbed his nose against Kageyama's shirt. And Kageyama could _feel_ it, could feel all the places they were touching. "It's weird, but I don't feel that sad. I'm kind of just… glad to see you, finally."

Kageyama felt a lot of things. Maybe he was sad for Hinata; but he was also happy, even if that then made him feel a bit horrible. And he was also soft and warm, which weren't really feelings, or at least he hadn't known they could be, until he'd found himself hugging Hinata.

"I'm glad to see you, too," he said.

"Couldn't you always see me?" Hinata asked.

"Yeah," Kageyama said. "But now you see me back."

*

"Do you have a cold?" Kageyama asks Tooru, as he hastily wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

"No, Tobio-chan, these are seasonal allergies," he says. Where did he put that damn tissue box? "I have to admit—" Ah, there it is. Tooru honks his nose very loudly into a tissue. "I'm not really sure why you two need my help."

"You can't tell us anything?" Hinata asks, dismayed.

"No, I mean," Tooru shrugs, "are you actually unhappy? You seem…"

 _Head over heels for each other,_ is what he thinks, but doesn't say. After all, where would be the fun in that revelation? Some things are best left understood over time; especially when given all the time in the world.

"You seem at peace," Tooru concludes, and he's not even lying to get them out of his hair. There's a hell of a lot of bickering back and forth, but in the end, it all amounts to a strange kind of comfort.

"Well…" Kageyama says, "yeah, I guess. But then why are we still here?"

"Where would you rather be?" Tooru asks shrewdly. There's silence.

"As long as I'm with Kageyama," Hinata says, orange mist curling tentatively, "anywhere's fine."

"Dumbass," Kageyama, predictably, responds. Blue fog puffs agitatedly. He sounds choked up. "You weren't supposed to die to be with me!"

"I didn't mean to!" Hinata protests. "But it's better with me around, isn't it? Now you're not so lonely. And I'm not, either!"

"Well, then," Tooru says cheerfully, "it looks like we've solved your problem! I'll leave you two to your afterlife! Now if you'll excuse me—"

"Oh, don't worry," Hinata says, just as brightly, "we'll live here for a bit so you don't feel lonely either!"

"What," Tooru deadpans.

"Yeah, I already talked to Tobio about it," Hinata reassures him. "We thought, in exchange for you helping us, we'd stay with you for awhile!"

"That really, _really_ is not necessary," Tooru tries to say.

"We don't mind," Kageyama says.

"Besides, I was planning to stay around and haunt Tsukishima for awhile," Hinata says. "So I have to practice moving things around and stuff."

"I bet I can do it before you," Kageyama challenges him.

"I bet I can move our crystal ball."

 _"Do not_ break anything, or I will exorcise you," Tooru threatens them.

The last thing he needs is two love-struck teenage ghosts making a mess of his apartment, but, what the hell, he reasons—maybe he can put them to good use. If they're planning on learning how to become corporeal, he can make them clean up the place and spook less affable guests into becoming true believers.

There's a knock on the door, a customer there for a reading, and he starts to rapidly straighten up his table.

"Stay quiet, pay attention, and maybe we can consider an arrangement," he says. A thought occurs to him and he smiles slyly. "Do either of you know how to make the lights flicker?"

"Me," Kageyama says, while Hinata whines and says he wants to try.  

Tooru laughs in delight. The afternoon is looking livelier already.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I am easily amused, I _had to_ write more ghost fic for my other Ally friend's bday XD This is for [Allykat23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allykat23)!
> 
> This is set a couple months after KageHina and Oikawa met!! Oikawa is now a psychic single dad trying to raise two annoying ghost kids, and the ghosts are winning

It is beginning to become clear to Tooru that there is, in fact, some _absolute bullshit_ going on, and he is definitely not amused by any of it.

This is the fifth time in a little over a month he's had to have a plumber come to look at his apartment—he's even had to reschedule tarot readings—and yet, as far as anyone can tell, plumber included… nothing seems to be the problem.

Which means that the only problem, then, is the bright and unabiding torch Tooru seems to be unable to set down, in regards to the plumber himself.

"So…" the man says, wiping his hands dry on a towel in his belt loop. Tooru has to tear his eyes away from the prominent flex of his biceps as he does so, the swell of his pecs beneath his uniform polo shirt. The name tag on it reads _Iwaizumi._ "Can you walk me through what happened again?"

Tooru almost offers to walk him wherever he wants to go, up to and including the bedroom. He clenches his jaw shut so the words don't escape. Now is not the time to be thirsty—he doesn't even have running water.

"I was in the shower," he says, and feels his cheeks go distinctly pink just from the suggestion of nakedness, and forces himself to look at the man. Mistake. He finds his gaze being met by a pair of serious, attentive green eyes; Tooru feels like he's baring his soul, not recapping the issues with his faulty water line. He clears his throat, hoping Iwaizumi has not noticed the unnecessarily long pause while he gathers himself. "I was… showering, when the water started to feel—strange? I don't know how to describe it. And when I looked, it was… purple."

"Purple," Iwaizumi repeats, deadpan.

"Yes."

"Well," Iwaizumi says, turning the shower knob to the side. Out the water comes, clear as usual. "It's not now."

"I can see that," Tooru sniffs. It's one thing to have a crush; it's another thing to have a crush on someone who clearly thinks he's an idiot.

"Just like," the distressingly attractive handyman continues, and oh, no, Tooru can see what's coming next, "last week, when not only did the water _not_ run cold when you tried to turn it hot, but the toilet _also_ flushed the correct way. Which is to say—"

"Down, yes, I know," Tooru cuts him off, feeling increasingly mortified. Last week had really been a nightmare—frigid water every time he tried to shower, and toilet geysers every which way he looked. "Look, I'm just as confused as you are! One of your colleagues who came the… second time, was it? He said it could be something to do with the pipes. Mold, or something!" He shudders at the thought. "Maybe he could give a second opinion?"

Iwaizumi scoffs. "He's not coming back. Why do you think I've been here _four times_ already?"

"I don't… know?" Tooru says. "I figured—scheduling?"

"Yeah, he's been scheduling himself other jobs so he doesn't have to come here," Iwaizumi says. "He's superstitious. All your weird, mystical stuff, it freaked him out."

"What—" Tooru can't believe this. "But it's not _dangerous!"_

"You try telling him that," Iwaizumi says, shaking his head. "He kept telling me he felt a _presence."_

"But I would have felt it, too," Tooru insists. He knows people tend to take one of two routes with this: skittish, like the other plumber. Or skeptical, like Iwaizumi. But he seriously needs his house fixed, or he's going to lose it. "There's no other presences here, besides me and—"

He trails off. Wait just a fucking second.

"That's what I tried to tell him, but he wouldn't bite. So, good luck getting him back here…" Iwaizumi shrugs. "Looks like you're stuck with me."

Tooru waves a hand vaguely. "Oh, I don't mind that." He peers around the room, turning in a slow circle.

"You… don't?" Iwaizumi asks, eyebrows raising in surprise. When Tooru doesn't answer, he glances around the room suspiciously, too. "What are you doing?"

"Shhh..." Tooru says, holding up a hand. "I'm divining for spirits."

"Are you serious," Iwaizumi says flatly. "Listen, I'm gonna pack up and head out—I won't bill you for today, I barely—"

 _"Shhhhh!"_ Tooru hisses, silencing him. The air in the room feels very still, to him—still and pitched high, like a tuning fork being struck although in reality, all is quiet.

He spots movement at the edges of his vision and whips his head sharply to the side, where he sees them—two wide, floating pairs of eyes in the bathroom mirror, not a reflection, but an _impression._ One pair deep and dark, the other sparking and bright. Two little souls, bound to him by choice.

He flings out a hand and points dramatically at the mirror. "It's been YOUUUU!" he howls, startling Iwaizumi, and both pairs of eyes dance about in silent panic before blipping out of existence. Only they're still there, he knows, just hiding.

"What the fuck—" Iwaizumi says, but very unfortunately, Tooru doesn't have time to devote to him anymore—he needs to figure out how to murder someone who is already dead. An exorcism is too good for these little shits.

"Sorry, Iwa-chan, but I'll have to say bye for today—" Tooru tells him as he rolls his sleeves up menacingly.

_"Iwa-chan?"_

"The spirits have turned against me!" Tooru yells, shoving him towards the door. "This is no place for a normal person, quickly, escape!"

"Wait a second—"

"I'll be fine!" Tooru insists, before he bodily shoved Iwaizumi out into the hallway. It's not easy—Iwaizumi is _solid._ "Forget what you saw here today," Tooru hisses ominously at him through the crack in the door, before slamming it shut in his stunned face.

Now. To deal with his little ghoulish problem.

He yanks the plush tablecloth and all his seance equipment off his dining room table and locates a piece of ordinary chalk. After several moments of frantic scribbling, it is covered in the symbols and sigils of a powerful summoning circle. He places candles around the edges, and begins to chant a binding ritual ominously. The candle flames flicker, and his hair blows in the gathering breeze inside his living room.

A noise begins to build as well, a terrible, scraping, screaming noise, filled with agony and tumult. It gets louder as he chants, and as it grows, so too do two indistinct shapes in the center of the summoning circle. They writhe and tremble, shapes at once frightening and pitiable, carving to his whim at the same time that they fight it with all their might. The flames suddenly surge upwards, bursting to life, and Tooru slams his hands down on the tabletop.

"Would you give it a rest with that?" he says crossly, and the unearthly screeching stops at once. "The neighbors are going to complain again!"

"Why couldn't you just call us normally?" Kageyama asks him. His ghostly form bubbles sulkily, like seething, purplish-blue lava.

"Because," Tooru says, pointing an accusatory finger at him, "you two never come out when you know you're in trouble, you just make me follow your traces all over the apartment—"

 _"Are_ we in trouble?" Hinata asks. He is light made solid, a fizzing sine wave of glinting gold.

"Obviously!" Tooru says, and both ghosts wobble flinchingly. "What on earth are you two trying to do? Do you know how much money I've spent on repair company appraisals that all lead nowhere?"

Honestly, even he isn't sure what they're up to. It's not like them—they aren't poltergeists, they're not malicious. For all that Tooru pretends it's a chore having them around, he's constantly surprised by how little he actually does mind. Since the two of them unceremoniously crashed his life as an (extremely) eligible bachelor and practicing psychic, they've been content to just keep each other company and learn how to be better ghosts. Unfortunately, this seems to have included manifesting the ability to haunt his plumbing.

He shakes his head. "This isn't like you two. I'm… frankly, I'm disappointed."

The candles flicker morosely and the chandelier directly overhead sways in remorse.

"We… we just wanted to help," Hinata says eventually.

"Help with what?" Tooru asks, blankly.

"You just seemed lonely!"

"He's gonna get mad…" Kageyama warns.

"I seemed _lonely?"_ Tooru repeats, sputtering. That's preposterous, to say the least. "I'm certainly not. I could never be lonely with you two—" he catches himself just in time, "—with you two constantly pestering me!"

"It's not the same!" Hinata says.

"Trust me, Shouyou-chan—"

"We noticed the way you stare at the repairman," Kageyama interjects.

Tooru's mouth falls open. He cannot believe he is being set up with his plumber by two dead idiots who still haven't realized they are in love with each other.

"Have you, Tobio-chan?" he replies, with a silken smile. "Recognize the feeling, do you?"

Kageyama must realize the danger he's in, because he stops trying to argue. Tooru drops his smile.

"You two," he says, "are going to stay in the circle for awhile and think about your actions. Also, there is to be no possessing of any household objects for one whole week, effective immediately."

Kageyama and Hinata both whine something awful at this, and Tooru crosses his arms and basks in their misery for a few glorious moments. They love racing each other to possess things right before Tooru uses them, but they've never tried to make anything malfunction before, so he allows it. Hinata's favorite is the teapot, because it tickles when it starts to boil. Kageyama likes the aging washing machine. He's never said why, but Tooru suspects it's because the old thing sounds nearly as grumpy as Kageyama himself does when it really gets going on its spin cycle.

"Keep it up," he sings, as the candles start to turn an odd shade of green, "and it's gonna be two weeks."

The whining stops, but Kageyama does throw a "You know we're right," at him as he leaves them there in the summoning circle. Tooru does not deign to respond.

"How long before we can come out?" Hinata calls after him.

"Until I say you can," Tooru replies. He ignores their ghostly wailing for the rest of the afternoon, until they have settled down and started to play _I, Spy_ with each other. He refuses to admit that he finds it adorable when they get along, even if it's mostly because they're plotting against him together.

*

Unfortunately, the plotting does not end there. A few days pass without incident, and Tooru is lulled into a false sense of security. The week comes and goes; Friday arrives in a leisurely fashion. So leisurely, in fact, that Tooru decides to take a luxurious bubble bath to pamper himself. He spends a long time soaking in the tub, and is slightly surprised to see no signs of his two ghosts anywhere—normally, they would get into a game of Bubble Wars while Tooru relaxed, watching the massive orange and blue soap bubbles floating around the bathroom, trying to ram each other to see who would pop first. Today, all is quiet, and so Tooru enjoys a glass of wine in peace.

He finishes his bath and lets the tub drain, wrapping towels around his waist and his wet hair. He will need to blow dry it and make sure it looks appropriately dashing before his evening client appointment, and he's about to dig the hairdryer out from under the sink when there's an odd rumbling sound from behind him. He turns, frowning, to look at the toilet.

Naturally, this is the point at which the toilet attempts to murder him.

"WHY?!" he shrieks, devoid of anything else to say in his panic, as twisting tendrils of water burst from the bowl, latching around his arms and legs, dragging him towards it. Try as he might, he can't break free, and as he is wrenched closer and closer, the entire opening of the toilet seems to yawn, wide—he can see blackness and light swirling in its depths, and he realizes, _shit, spirit portal—_ "Tobio-chan?! Shouyou?!"

The entire bathroom is flooding with water. There's a horrible, slurping, _shloomp_ -ing sound as Tooru hits the rim of the bowl and starts to get sucked inside of it. He can feel the vacuum of empty space seizing onto him, an unstoppable force.

"You little _shits,_ I'm going to make you corporeal long enough to punch you both in the _face—"_  

He hears a loud banging from far away, and wonders, _what now,_ but then comes the sound of something _splintering,_ and a moment later a voice bellows, "OIKAWA?"

Tooru gasps. "I-Iwa-chan?!"

He hears someone running, and then Iwaizumi— _how_ is he here, Tooru wonders—bursts onto the scene, framed in the doorway, bearing a stunning resemblance to an angry bull. He takes in the sight before him quickly—the toilet, the spirit portal, Tooru's hair in a towel cone—and leaps into action. He wades through the flood, reaching out, and Tooru stretches out his hands—Iwaizumi grabs his arms and heaves, and Tooru begins, ever so slowly, to pull free of the portal.

"GRAB ON, STUPID!" Iwaizumi shouts at him, and Tooru throws caution to the winds and flings his arms around his neck, and Iwaizumi seizes him around the waist and yells bloody murder as he leans all the way backwards—and then they're falling free, onto the bathroom floor, Tooru crushed to Iwaizumi's extremely firm and noticeably broad chest. There's a howling, rushing noise, and all the water on the floor recedes whiplash fast, suctioned back into the toilet, which then closes its lid with a sassy and decisive _snap._

For a moment, neither Tooru, nor Iwaizumi moves. They just lay there, panting and exhausted. Iwaizumi lets out a slow breath.

"Holy shit," he says, "your apartment is haunted."

Tooru sighs. "It's not _haunted._ It's being _visited_ by spirits."

"That literally is what haunted means," Iwaizumi points out.

"We're not visiting, we live here!" Tobio's ghostly voice shouts in Tooru's ear.

"I'm evicting you!" Tooru shouts back, incensed.

"Are you talking to the—" Iwaizumi says, before sitting up abruptly, causing Tooru to roll off of him. He hastily readjusts the towel around his waist—he's lucky it stayed on at all. Iwaizumi swats at the air. "Hey! You fucking ghosts! What the hell is your problem?!"

"They're trying to get me to—" Tooru pinches his lips shut, irritably. He settles on redirecting the conversation. "Why… _how_ did you know I was in trouble?"

"I didn't," Iwaizumi says. "I mean, not until I heard you screaming."

"Screaming seems like an exaggeration—"

"I thought it was the fire alarm at first," Iwaizumi says. He is _ruthless._ Tooru likes it.

"Okay," he concedes, "but that doesn't explain why you were _here."_

"Ah," Iwaizumi says, "well… the days have been alternating." When Tooru continues to look confused, he elaborates. "The first time you called us was on a Monday. Then Thursday of that same week. Then the next week, Friday. Then last week, back to Monday, then Thursday. Now it's Friday, so I just thought…"

"Of course." Tooru snaps his fingers in realization. "Spirits can't tell the flow of time like you or I, so often, they'll develop certain predictable paths of behavior… you must be sensitive to their ways in order to have seen that!"

Iwaizumi stares at him. "Or… I'm just better at pattern recognition than you are?"

Tooru waves a hand. "Whatever. Second question: did you break my door down?"

Iwaizumi's expression turns slightly shifty. "Kicked it off its hinges, actually… I can fix it."

Tooru only wishes he'd been there to witness it. Iwaizumi stands, and Tooru allows himself to be helped to his feet, Iwaizumi's strong, sturdy arms steadying him after he pulls Tooru off the floor. He notices, then, two fuzzy gazes peering out of the mirror at him, and scowls at them. He can't decide how angry he is yet. On the one hand, having Iwaizumi come daringly to his rescue is hardly the worst thing that could be happening to him on a Friday afternoon. On the other hand, he'd been stuck inside of a toilet when it had happened; not quite the stuff of romance novels.

Iwaizumi notices him staring, and turns to look curiously at the mirror. "You don't act like they're evil."

"They're not," Tooru says, rolling his eyes. "They're just meddlesome and stupid."

"Hey!" Hinata yelps.

"Well, you are."

Iwaizumi's lips twitch. "So… mind telling me what they were meddling for?"

"Um…" Tooru does mind—but unfortuately, it doesn't seem as though this is going to stop unless he does something drastic. Like telling Iwaizumi the truth. And so, because he doesn't want some innocent civilian constantly being pulled into the affairs of ghosts, he says glumly, "They want me to ask you out."

There. Now, Iwaizumi will reject him, and Kageyama and Hinata will finally get out of his business.

"Well, why don't you?" Iwaizumi asks.

"Why don't I what?"

"Why don't you ask me out?"

Tooru opens his mouth to explain why he's not going to ask Iwaizumi out, when his synapses finish firing properly. He blinks. "…I thought you'd say no."

"Okay…" Iwaizumi says, and though his expression is completely serious, Tooru swears his dark eyes are gleaming a bit in amusement. "Why would I say no?"

"Because I'm weird," Tooru tells him. Is he being made fun of?

Iwaizumi shrugs. "Everyone's a little weird," he says. "You talk to ghosts. I get crushes on idiots who can talk to ghosts. While I'm trying to fix their haunted toilet."

"You—have a—" Tooru splutters. "On—on me?"

"Yeah, so, I may not have been totally honest before?" Iwaizumi confesses. "You did freak my colleague out, but I offered to take the house calls from you… I was pretty curious."

Tooru gapes at him for a few more seconds, before composing himself. He attempts to sweep his hair back, but just ends up knocking the towel off his head. He acts like this was intentional.

"Well, then," he says, "I'm glad that's been resolved." He turns to address the room at large. "You hear that, you monsters? I told you I'd take care of it, so you can stop being the worst, now." Oh, my _god,_ Iwaizumi is _into him._

"You didn't take care of jack shit," Kageyama says.

"Language, Tobio-chan!"

"You swear all the time!"

"What… are their names again?" Iwaizumi asks.

"The stupid one is Shouyou," Tooru says, ignoring Hinata's continued protesting. "And the stupider one is Tobio." Kageyama joins in.

Iwaizumi tries unsuccessfully to bite back a grin. "Okay. Well… Shouyou, Tobio, I'm Hajime. It's, uh—nice to meet you?"

The discarded towel suddenly lifts at both corners, flapping like it's waving at Iwaizumi. He takes a reflexive step backwards, before laughing, somewhat in shock. He waves back.

It makes Tooru feel terribly fond, which he hates; not just because he's only spoken to Iwaizumi five times so far in his life, but also because Hinata and Kageyama deserve an exorcism, not an introduction. But Tooru thinks he will let it slide, this once.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" he asks Iwaizumi.

"I would…" Iwaizumi says, "but I should probably head home to shower…"

"Stay," Tooru says lightly, even though his heart is pounding, just a little. "And use mine?"

Iwaizumi grins. "Might as well. I'm pretty familiar with it already."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm [@esselley](http://esselley.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, [@Esselle_hq](https://twitter.com/Esselle_hq) on Twitter]


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